


Jetsam

by temporalDecay



Series: Wreckstuck [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia-Focused, Ancestor fic, Ancestors, Ancestors-Era, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 16:38:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4443737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Second in the <em>Wreckstuck</em> series. The story of Her Imperious Condescension is the story of the Alternian Empire, you can't tell one without dwelling into the other.</p><p>In which the Empress faces new trials and tribulations of rulership: a plague, two rebellions, social reforms, several assassination attempts, one uppity heiress challenge, a goddamn mutant with dreams (but not a prophet) and perhaps the greatest challenge of them all, a smug moirail who’s convinced he knows better.</p><p>Includes a reality melting rustblood, political intrigue, a ruthlessly kind violetblood, awkward relationships, a honking mirthful mess of a purpleblood, a great plague, a prim and proper indigoblood, a blueblood rebellion, a self-important violetblood, meteors, a motherly jadeblood, cat puns, a well-meaning greenblood scribe, the institutionalization of the hemospectrum, a snarky goldblood slave, even more sandpits than Flotsam, a peaceful mutant idealist, copious betrayals, and an increasingly embittered fushciablood who just really wants to cull them all (most of the time anyway).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jetsam

**Author's Note:**

> AND WE'RE OFF, BABY.
> 
> The merry trip into despair and horribleness and no happy endings ever continues. Yay?
> 
> Look out for the non-con/rape warning, particularly for this chapter. There's nothing explicit - in this chapter, or any future ones - but the warning is there for a reason and the implications might end up being creepier as it is.
> 
> I decided to let the first chapter be shorter than my usual fare, much like I did with Flotsam, to sort of ease into the story and set the tone. And also to skirt about the Handmaid's meddling in the timeline, which will become more poignant when we get to Lagan and actually see everything go down properly. Also, guest starring Lord English, because why not?
> 
> Copious and furious thanks to Rieka for beta-reading this mess and beating it with a stick until it seemed vaguely coherent. All mistakes left are my own.

** Rust ♈ Servant **

The question echoes in the vastness of space, with an otherworldly tint of madness and… color, somehow, that makes you shiver with true fear for the first time in your young life. Fear is not something you’ve tasted, before now, despite the grueling nonsense you’ve been forced to endure at the hands of Doc Scratch. You’ve always known he was powerful, of course, you’ve been subjected to his cruel amusements in the guise of discipline since you have memory. But even then, you never really feared him, if nothing else because no matter what he did, you knew he would not kill you. He took unspeakable pleasure in reminding you exactly when and how you would finally achieve your end. 

But the monstrous figure standing before you, skin a sickly green and stretched taunt over bulging muscles, eyes cycling through the symbols of the Felt… him, you fear. 

And of course you have no answer for him, when the pulse of fear becomes constant enough for you to gather your wits. You’ve been prepared for this moment, to meet him face to face and enter his service properly, but at the same time, you don’t feel ready. You have no answers, none of the cutting wit you always imagined you’d have to spare, for the monstrosity even now every core of your being recognizes as your Master. 

“Oh, we knew she would run, didn’t we, My Lord? The game would be so very boring, otherwise.” 

A new, softer voice echoes behind you, and for a moment you take your eyes away from your Master to look at the figure watching you through half-lidded eyes. He is a troll, by all accounts, and yet you are most certain he is not, despite the healthy grey of his skin and the symmetrical horns crowning his head. His eyes are red-on-black, the same dark, burnt red that flows in your veins, and the same hue of the robes falling loosely down his shoulders. 

“YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO, SAGE, TO PAY YOUR DUES,” your Master says, that high and painful pitch making your skin break out in goosebumps. And for a moment, a cruel smile twists his features into something even more nightmare inducing than he already is. “BREAK THE BITCH. BREAK HER GOOD. BREAK HER HARD. THEN YOU MAY GO AND ENJOY YOUR PRIZE. FOR AS LONG AS IT WILL LAST YOU, ANYWAY.” 

The troll, who very clearly is not a troll, laughs at that, smiling back at your Master with something you can’t decipher. And then he spreads his arms, palm sides up and bows his head ever so slightly forward, in acknowledgement of an equal, you think, rather than submission to one’s better. Surprisingly, impossibly, your Master doesn’t destroy him for the offence. He simply vanishes between one Tic and its Toc, and then you’re standing there, cold and trying to remove the aftershock of fear from your tongue, when a hand falls on your shoulder, unbearably warm. 

“Come along, sweet thing,” he says, as something clammy and sickening curls up in your gut and refuses to leave, “eternity awaits.” 

You hated Doc Scratch. You fear your Master. But the Sage… you think you will spend the rest of your life trying to come up with a suitable word to describe what you feel, the precise moment he unceremoniously yanks you along through the stitches that hold Reality together, into the thin void in between, where he’s made his home. 

Eternity, he said. And though you know it’s not true – eternity has no end, and you’ve known of yours since before you were given a name – it feels like truth, as you stand beneath the arched ceiling of his hall. 

You’ve left your infancy behind, and now hell truly begins. 

** ♈  **

The Sage’s fortress, as you learn in the sweeps of service you spend under his care, was once anchored in Alternia, eons before trolls began to properly understand the concept of us versus them, and all their ludicrous separations existed. The Sage is a Witch, has never been anything other than a Witch, and he alone among his brethren enjoyed relative peace for millennia as the hallowed God that trolls bent the knee to. But then you happened. Will happen. Will have happened. 

It is confusing, but he is the Witch of Time, and under his tutelage you begin to learn to use the gifts you have been granted for the sake of your Master’s will. 

For your first eternity in the Sage’s fortress, you learn of history in the wider, more encompassing sense. Unlike Scratch’s self-involved rants, twisted around his absurd omniscient perspective, you learn to see ripples and tides cascading out of simple actions – the simple actions you will, in time, perform. The one staggering difference you learn you see, that allows you to dive into your studies with the diligence you never gave Scratch, is that it is you who controls what you see and how much. That you don’t have to read boring words or listen to unending chatter also helps greatly, you think. 

You make your home in the vast chamber deep in the bowels of the Sage’s stronghold, where among vaulted ceilings and an exquisitely built forest of trees, you find countless pools of iridescent liquid Time, where the timelines of this and every other world are kept for the Sage’s pleasure. Because he is Time, in its purest sense, in this and every other world, and it pleases him to own it in such a tangible way. So you sit on the pebbled rims and dip your fingers into the swirls of history, fishing out a thread to drink and relieve and learn, from the moment you wake to the moment your body collapses from the strain. You are given no food or water, and so you begin to sustain yourself with those bits of stolen Time, hoarding them inside your skull as you begin to form a real understanding of the world and your place in it. 

You review the life of Emperors and Tyrants and Kings, but you also learn about beggars and farmers and soldiers who die senseless, worthless deaths for the sake of masters they don’t even know. 

Try as you might, however, no matter what pool you dip your claws into, you never find a strand for yourself. None of your memories are stored there, for you to learn from, so instead you picture a map of your future achievements by the gaps left in everyone else’s knowledge of the world and its cruelty. 

You see nothing of the Sage or his Companion, during that first eternity in his service. You forget his voice and his face and his horns, drowning in the memories of so many others, and for a while you think it will not be so terrible, to serve this way, without anyone meddling or telling you what to do. 

But of course, this is to be your hell, and your eternity of learning true History, of filling up your belly with Time until it’s swollen and sore, must by necessity give way to something more suitably hell-like. 

It ends simply, one night – or day, there is no light in the Void you exist now, no real way to tell the passage of Time, because in here it is pooled into a perpetual Is that doesn’t flow so much as flood – as you reach a hand into the strands and find a larger, stronger hand clenching painfully around your wrist. 

“Enough,” the other tells you, a pretty thing by her own right, you suppose, her eyes red-on-orange just like yours. “The Sage deems you ready to begin your training, in earnest.” 

Wordlessly, you go. 

** ♈  **

“You have gathered the three most important things, sweet thing,” the Sage tells you, sitting upon his throne as he studies you with a paper thin smile. “You have purpose. You have knowledge now, of how to go about completing that purpose. You have power to use that knowledge properly. But as great as those things are, they are hardly enough to see you through this.” 

There is a pause, as he stands up and descends slowly the steps leading up to his exalted seat. You refuse to bow, standing uneasily before him as he approaches you. Every step echoes with the ghost of a clock’s wail folded in the sound, until he looms above you. He forces you to look at him, one unbearably warm hand tilting your chin up so he can sneer into your face, his claws digging into your face but not enough to leave a mark. 

“And oh you shall prevail, because we have made a deal with your Master, to ensure you will.” You shudder violently when he leans in to press his lips to your cheek, something vile twisting in your gut. “We have promised him a suitable Companion for his plans, even if you are a frail, broken thing worth nothing, and he is not a Witch, to have rights to such a thing.” His thumb trails across your lips and you wonder what would happen if you snapped your head to the side and sank your fangs into his flesh, as far as they could go. What his blood would taste like, on your tongue. “We’ve staked everything on you, sweet thing, and you will succeed. We shall make sure of it.” 

He leans in some more, his breath stinking up the air you breathe, and for a horrifying moment, you wonder if he’s going to kiss you. You tell yourself you will bite him, if he does. You will clench your jaw shut and tear off a piece of him, leave a mark that will never fade. But then he shoves you back instead and you stumble until you find yourself in his Companion’s hands, held up by the shoulders. She is a statuesque creature, her face and her hands and her whole body a collection of smooth, gently curving lines that terrify you in their intensity. She is the negative space that surrounds the Sage, you think with some hysterical resentment, the perfect counterbalance for him. And in her you see the ideal of what you must become, in a sense, to better serve your Master. 

The thought makes your empty stomach roll angrily with vile. 

“My Valkyrie will teach you all the techniques you need to learn, to complete your education,” the Sage says, and in his smile is an echo of the fingers slowly clenching and unclenching on your shoulders, as a mockery of a reassuring massage. “Learn every skill, master every task; we have little patience to wait for you to be done and you would not want us to take over your training, now would you, sweet thing?” 

Thus eternity begins anew. 

** ♈  **

The first thing you learn is how to fight. How to do harm to someone’s body, mind and soul. The Valkyrie systematically pushes your body to breaking point, during each and every session, but always stops short of letting you find out what your conditional mortality truly means. Under her careful, ruthless tutelage, your limbs grow strong and your muscles learn when to clench and when to loosen to amplify the effect. You learn to kill, swiftly and efficiently, and slowly and painfully. You learn to maim limbs and break bones and shatter hopes. You learn everything there is to know, about fighting and war and making trolls cower at your feet, to wield pain as surely and efficiently as you need. 

Then she teaches you how to hide in plain view, how to collect secrets without letting others know that is what you’re stealing from them. She teaches you stand and walk and float, unseen despite the lack of actual magic at your fingertips. She teaches you to rely on the talents you already have, without tapping into the fountain of power somewhere under your ribs, that kernel of your Master’s will that allows you access to all the powers he’s amassed. The Valkyrie allows you no shortcuts and no easy ways out. She grinds you to the ground under the sole of her feet, and you learn to hate her for being who you are not but desperately must become. 

You regret your hatred of her, when your last lesson becomes clear. 

“You were made beautiful for a reason,” she tells you, circling you as you stand at the ready, arms loosely hanging off your shoulders. “We allowed you to remain beautiful for a reason,” she continues, coming to stand behind you, hands falling easily on your shoulders and making your spine stiffen. “We’ve taught you how to force and coerce what you want from others, but for what you’ll need to do, you’ll need to know how to tempt them, as well.” You snarl, the sound somewhat buried under the unpleasant echo of cloth ripped by her claws. It is only out of sheer stubborn pride that you don’t flinch away, when she hooks her chin on your shoulder, looking at you from the corner of her eye. “Though perhaps the reason you were made beautiful is not so much because you’d need it to learn this skill, so much as because it will greatly please my Master to teach you it.” 

You do flinch away, but when you raise a hand to rake your claws across her face, your wrist is caught in another’s. The Sage smiles indulgently down at you, as you begin to fear him, for the first time, beyond that murky feeling of disgust and disdain forever bubbling in your gut. Fractured shards of memories yours but not your own echo from beyond the edge of your being, and you feel the pulse of your disgusted fear slide against the wall keeping that knowledge out of your reach, like a key into a lock. 

You remember their faces, their names, the whirlwind of hatred and despair that destroyed you inside out and which still somehow wasn’t enough to make you _stop_ being you. 

“Oh, don’t look at us like that, sweet thing,” he says, pressing a gentle kiss to the inside of your wrist to contrast the violence of the Valkyrie ripping off the rest of your clothes. You find yourself pressed against the coarse fabric of the Sage’s robes, every inch of skin screaming in protest. “We promise you will enjoy this lesson, our talent for loving is only second to our master y of Time.” 

You tilt your chin up and dare this eternity to do its worst. You’re a survivor. You have always been a survivor. Across time and space, no matter the universe, the true constant is your survival and your inability to _break_. 

You refuse to give the Sage the satisfaction. 

** ♈  **

The air is thickly sweet and your airsacks burn from disuse as you feel Time flow around you like a great, heaving sigh. You stare at the world around you with a muted sense of boredom, because while it is objectively beautiful and well-cared for, you already know how it will spiral into madness and despair. You already know what is coming and how you plan to accomplish it. You know the price these lands will pay for the sake of another’s games. 

At your right, the Sage stands on thin air, his expression a placid mockery of content that has long stopped your insides from twitching with revulsion. He is done with you and you are done with him, and all this amounts to is a symbolic severance of ties so he may go off and join his brethren in whatever poor, misshapen world will have them. You don’t pity that world, because you have drained your reserves of sympathy, the well of emotions has dried up leaving only a husk of hatred and spite that will carry you through your mission until you’re granted the blessed relief you were promised. 

“There,” the Sage says, as the faint music holding Reality in place fades away to nothing and a cacophony of silence rushes in to fill in its place. Somewhere far, far away, deep beneath the surf, Gl’bgolyb has at long last ended her Song. “And now that the dreadful sound is gone,” he adds, turning to face you with an arrogant smirk you no longer wish to claw off his face, “show me what you’ve learned.” 

Down below, in the grassland, two white eggs have waited patiently for their Time to enter the world. Without the careful script of the Song guiding their existence, however, they tremble and slowly crack open, releasing the soft, weakened creatures within. You watch the wigglers chirr at each other and the sky, instinctively knowing something is missing. 

You clench your hands around your wands and tap into the power boiling angrily under your ribs. Somewhere at the other end of your connection, your Master opens the bottomless pool of might to you, pleased with your own strength. 

And so you strike the wigglers, moments after they’ve hatched, with the raw clockwork majyyks at your disposal. The effect is muted and monumental all at once. From the tiny, helpless wigglers burst out adult creatures with long limbs and sharp claws and magnificent horns atop their heads. The First Trolls stare at each other as they transform, reaching out to touch and hold because somewhere inside their skulls, the imperative still thumps and they know they are the same, that they need one another to survive. 

And you wait and wait, until their fingers are but a hairbreadth away, before you jerk your right hand away and the creature that will one day be known as the Great Mother screams and vanishes from sight, flung by your powers to the other side of the world, where the creature that will one day be known as the First Father will never be able to find her. 

This is how it begins, you think, with loss before joy, and your meddling ensuring things go the way they are supposed to, even if that isn’t how things were meant to be. 

“Good girl,” the Sage says, reaching a hand to pat your shoulder. He laughs when you duck out of the way, sneering back at him. “I do believe we’re done now, but feel free to come by and visit if you ever get… lonely.” You bare your teeth at him, telegraphing clearly exactly how you feel about that. “And do not forget, my dear, when the Time is right, you still need to deal with… Her.” 

You doubt you could forget, your entire being attuned to the power slumbering in the depths of the world, pulsing irritably against the bonds that keep it captive. But you’ll decide when the Time is right, for that. You’ll decide when and how and what you’ll do, before retrieving the one creature the Sage seems to fear and hate as much as you fear and hate him. 

“ _Fuck **off**_ ,” you say, voice low, and don’t stay long to see his reaction. 

Eternity is long over, all that’s left is the constant countdown to freedom. 

You can hardly wait. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Askblog for this verse.](http://that-stupid-fic.tumblr.com)


End file.
